The Callaway Investments Sportsman Street Stock Series visited the 1-mile Phoenix International Raceway this past Tuesday night for a 60-lap feature event, for their second race of the season. A total of 25 drivers would try find victory lane in the desert sun.
To start off the event, Joe Schaffer Jr. put down the hot lap in Time Trials with a 32.554-second pole winning time. A seven-car invert, however, would shake up the front of the field and brought Austin Yarbrough to the front of the field for the Dash and the race. In the qualifying dash, Yarbrough was able to hold off the 10-car Dash field to score some extra bonus points towards the championship standings.
The 25-car field would take the green with Yarbrough leading the field through the early laps. Pack racing was a big part of the event, as the leaders could never get away from a side-by-side group of cars filling the rest of the top 10. Yarbrough was challenged and passed for the lead by Tom Wetmore on lap 7, and he would lead through the race’s first yellow flag on lap 9. Shortly after the restart, Yarbrough was able to reclaim the top spot.
On lap 16 on the front stretch, a multi-car accident occurred outside the top five which would shake up the running order with some cars having to come down for repairs. The race restarted again on lap 22 with Yarbrough still out front, and with Matt Rolfe, Tom Wetmore, Ty Spearman and James Linwiewicz in the top five in the early running.
Rolfe would become the main challenger for the top spot as he would pass Yarbrough for the lead on lap 24, with the two of them swapping it a couple times as Rolfe led 5 laps in a short period, but Yarbrough would retake it for good on lap 30 from Rolfe. A long green flag run would ensue as Rolfe continued to stay right with Yarbrough but wasn’t able to find a way by. The top eight cars separated themselves from the rest of the field at this point as those drivers would be separated by about 1.2 seconds throughout this run.
A caution for an incident near the back of the field brought out the yellow with with 12 laps remaining. Cautions would breed cautions as behind Yarbrough, a couple of cars at the front of the field got together causing a stack-up off turn four which would damage most of the front running cars and send them to get a repair under yellow. However, out front, Yarbrough continued to lead through the race’s next restart and the final yellow coming to the white flag.
Yarbrough would end up leading 49 of the race’s 60 laps for his third career SARA victory.
Ty Spearman hung around the back of the lead pack for most of the race, but was able to dodge the incident in the closing laps and was able to work his way up to finish 2nd. Conner Blaise, much like Spearman ran towards the back of the lead group and peaked late for a 3rd place run. Derek Kraus was involved an early caution and progressed back through the field to finish 4th. Tom Wetmore led laps early before slipping back to round out the top five with a 5th place finish.
Clay Snider started mid-pack and found himself behind the front group of leaders for most of the race and wound up in 6th. Kevin J Myers was in the front pack before he had some issues under green, but charged late to a 7th place finish. Scott Dunlap shuffled in and out of the top 15 for most of the race before picking up a few spots late to finish 8th. Travis Warling started in 23rd position and gained some positions late to finish in 9th. Christopher Alcares rounded out the top ten by finishing 10th in his first career Street Stock race with the league.
With a pair of podium finishes in the first two official races of the season, Ty Spearman leaves Phoenix with the points lead and will bring the series into next week’s race at the Five Flags Speedway.
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